We will make our education system one of the best in the world with equal opportunities for all of our children. We will –<\/p>\n
\u2022\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Expand early education and childcare to 30 hours per week – this will require, by the end of the par-liament, additional investment of \u00a3500 million per year by 2021, 600 new childcare centres and 20,000 new childcare staff.
\n\u2022\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Invest \u00a3750 million in raising attainment for all \u2013 targeting school funding where it is needed, and put-ting more resources in the hands of individual schools including \u00a3500m raised directly from local taxa-tion for investment in schools.
\n\u2022\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Implement the National Improvement Framework to drive up standards across all schools.
\n\u2022\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Empower parents and teachers to be more involved in the decisions about their schools, and provide more resources direct to schools.
\n\u2022\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Widen access to our universities, protect college places, appoint a Commissioner for Fair Ac-cess, invest in free education, and reform student support to benefit all students.<\/p>\n
We will create opportunities to thrive from our youngest children to our oldest pensioner. We will –<\/p>\n
\u2022\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Support parents and young children with a new Maternity and Early Years grant, the universal baby box, and 500 more health visitors.
\n\u2022\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Ensure that our young people benefit from new opportunities with 30,000 apprenticeships, a new Jobs Grant to support them into work, free bus travel for apprentices and young people who have been unemployed, and help for housing for 18-21 year olds.
\n\u2022\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Build a social security system based on dignity and respect and invest more than \u00a3200 million to make social security fairer.
\n\u2022\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Protect disabled people from further cuts, reform the assessment system and support Scotland\u2019s Carers.
\n\u2022\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Tackle poverty through a Fairer Scotland Action Plan.
\n\u2022\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Give our older people the opportunity for thriving and active lives with concessionary travel, free per-sonal care, free prescriptions and protect low income pensioners from rises in taxation.<\/p>\n
We will transform public services for the 21st century \u2013 our NHS will be protected, nurtured and re-formed. We will –<\/p>\n
\u2022\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0We will increase the health budget in real terms every year and by almost \u00a32 billion in total over the
\ncourse of the next \u00a0Parliament – \u00a3500 million more than inflation.
\n\u2022\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Reform the NHS to meet the challenge of an ageing population, investing in social and primary care, and allocating an additional \u00a3150 million to mental health and \u00a3100m to tackling cancer.
\n\u2022\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Invest \u00a3200 million in five new elective treatment centres and create a new trauma network using sites in Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Dundee and Glasgow.
\n\u2022\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Ensure there are no barriers to care between health boards, social care partnerships, primary care, communities and local councils.
\n\u2022\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Protect funding for the police in real terms and introduce a new criminal offence to tackle all forms of domestic abuse.<\/p>\n
We will grow our economy with a focus on creating more, better and higher paid jobs. We will –<\/p>\n
\u2022\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Lead a national drive to boost productivity with support for new ideas and entrepreneurs.
\n\u2022\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Extend the Small Business Bonus, so that 100,000 businesses will pay no business rates at all, main-taining a competitive business environment.
\n\u2022\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Build the infrastructure that Scotland needs to grow, with almost \u00a320 billion of investment in roads, rail, schools and 50,000 new homes – and 100% broadband coverage across all of Scotland.
\n\u2022\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Extend payment of the living wage and develop an employment service that supports people into work.
\n\u2022\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Establish an Innovation prize, support education for entrepreneurs, review business support to focus on innovation, internationalisation and scaling up companies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We will make our education system one of the best in the world with equal opportunities for all of our children. We will – \u2022\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Expand early education and childcare to 30 hours per week – this will require, by the end of the par-liament, additional investment of \u00a3500 million per year by 2021, 600 new childcare centres and 20,000 new childcare staff. \u2022\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Invest \u00a3750 million in raising attainment for all \u2013 targeting school funding where it is needed, and put-ting more resources in the hands of individual schools including \u00a3500m raised directly from local taxa-tion for investment in schools. \u2022\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Implement the NationalRead More →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1341"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1341"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1341\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1342,"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1341\/revisions\/1342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}